Quote Originally Posted by JoshuaZ View Post
But in practice you are cutting out a massive amount of official content.
But you are always doing that... I character can only have so much classes, feats etc... Choosing not to Pun Pun is not removing a whole lot of stuff. When you build your character you might just build for something that is not Pun Pun... or Incantatrix... Thats not the same as removing stuff from the game...


I'm not sure what your point is here. What definition is in question in my comment?
I'm just saying that a discussion of what is broken requires a fairly agreed upon definition of what broken means. When I use broken i mean unplayable. How I define unplayable is not set in stone... it could mean a lot of things... Sadly it now easy to agree really...


Epic spellcasting is a system which has extremely detailed and specific rules about how to create epic spells. That's very different than a handwavy statement to DMs.
Indeed... but the DM still tells you plenty. And yes the Epic Magic system is very poorly written, why I don't think its cool, and why my mage has opted to not use it yet...


If it works for you, more power to you and your group. But the fact is that you are massively cutting out things from the game, and not just stuff like Sarrukh's abilities but a large part of the material you can find in the SRD. No one is asserting that there are not solutions and it can be made to work. The point is that it requires a lot of *effort* to do so. As you yourself say, you are engaging in major metagaming to explain why your wizard doesn't do some things.
I think its fair to assume that what your character knows are based on his knowledge checks. I also think its fair to assume that since the game world is not overrun by Pun Puns, its simply not possible or else Larloch, Ioulaum, Szass Tam or the Srinshee would have done it by now... Maybe the knowledge of the Sarrukh's abilities have been lost to the ages, and that's the reason for why there are no Pun Puns in the game world. My wizard does not do certain things because its not his style. I don't use a familiar, I don't bind demons, devils or celestials, I don't live on a pocket plane because I have never found that spell ingame, nor do I think its cool. Obviously I'm choosing options that are adequate to the challenge of the game as a whole, but more so I'm choosing things I think is cool and that fit the overall demeanor and style of the character... Some DM's might throw epic dragons at us and so I would gate in abominations from ELH, but I consider that weak... having to get "friends" to help you... The classes that my wizard has, is mainly chosen for its fluff, but also if it brings some added ability or power to the character... So not the most powerful PrC in the game...


Stat increases happen automatically. A wizard is going to keep increasing their intelligence, and get items which increase intelligence. And only the strongest saves increase at 1/2 level. A minimally intelligent wizard doesn't target the strongest save but the weakest save, and that's before we get to the fact that I specifically discussed not targeting saves at all.
Yes at 1/4 level so for each 8 level you get +1 to DC. The same 8 levels gives +4 to saves... And its all three saves that increase! Items yes, but items can increase saves more.. because saves are cheaper than stats. Indeed a wizard should try to use spells that attack the weakest save or use Save: No spells, but my point was that its an actually design that ends op making a wizard unable to get spells in.


So again you have to specifically make characters who, despite the incredible dangers around them, with possibly the fate of the world at hand, and being smarter than almost any other human on the planet (and certainly smarter than a normal human), decides to not bother using the best spells they can.
Well you have to understand that not all games are created equally. The arms race between player and DM we are long pased... We have yet to have any fate of the world quests... and the chances that they would come up in the time our characters are alive, considering the planet is around 40k old, are small. And if they did there are more powerful beings to take care of that. Because if its the fate of the planet at risk, you can be damn sure that we would not be able to stop it... If were talking Pandorym level risk... anything less than that is not really the fate of the world...


And one thing to keep in mind is that there are a lot of games out there where one doesn't need to worry about players being "jerks" or accidentally optimizing too much. E6-core for example works pretty well, and E6 works pretty well even with a whole bunch of splat books thrown. Because low level D&D is actually not that broken. There's a substantial change happening. If one prefers imagine a new player entering your group who hasn't played with you before and hasn't discussed the balance point much at all. What's the chance that at 5th level their new character is overpowered or underpowered compared to the other players? By how much? Now imagine this at 15th level or 25th level. Notice the chance of something being drastically mispowered goes up.
I don't know E6...